Must have skills for budding entrepreneurs and start-up founders

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

No matter what you do or how you plan to do it, what everyone haunts for is success, reciprocating for their hard work.

Starting up any business is not as easy as it sounds like. Just hard work is not enough, it has its own set of challenges and opportunities but the most daunting part comes through the first step taken. It’s the part where most people whiffle.

How to set your start-up, best optimisation of labour and resources or be it overcoming small failures, there’s shockingly a very little information available about how to actually start a start-up.

The foremost reason for any failure is that entrepreneur doesn’t know when to start and how to execute. Though most of the successful people today didn’t know anything about the same, somehow, they managed and overcame everything in their way.

But in today’s date as e-commerce is on heat and with start-up culture growing so fast it’s mandatory to know about some points and tactics about the same.

Here is a list of some must-have skills for budding entrepreneurs and start-up founders to succeed in their venture.

1. Ability to learn

Utilising the benefits of learning takes effort and time, but as you start, you’d realise the many benefits of it. Defining intelligence as the ability to learn implies an important association between intelligence test scores and gain due to practice.

Intelligence-the ability to learn, understand, reason, and solve problems quickly and effectively are the most important factors for setting up any business and further.

“You will never know enough. You will always be forced to make a decision without fully understanding what is coming. As a founder, that is just something you have to get comfortable with.”-Aaron O’Hearn, Co-founder, and CEO of Start-up Institute

2. Cash flow management

Cash flow management is a key component for any business. To track and monitor all the spending and earning, one must have all the track records hand in hand for avoiding any further business failures.

The best way out is to understand the cash flow of your business and limit the fixed expenses, this is what will help you to raise money for future.

Remain optimistic but prepare for the worst. Every minute of your time has a monetary value. Focus on customer acquisition. Make sure you pay yourself. Establish financial goals and try your best to cover it all up at the end. Money management is the key to any business.

“If you don’t take care of your money your money won’t take care of you.” -Mac Duke, The Strategist

3. Stress management

The sooner you learn small business stress management, the better. Workplace stress management strategies for business can have long-term effects on your health and business. Learning how to recognise and deal with stress and its causes, can bring myriad benefits as an entrepreneur, so it is important to know how to recognise the tell-tale signs of stress, common causes of it and how to manage it effectively.

“There’s more to life than just increasing its speed.” -Mahatma Gandhi

4. Knowing strengths and weaknesses

No one is born perfect and as an entrepreneur, you don’t need to be perfect at all the fields. Successful entrepreneurs know their own strengths and weaknesses. They build their businesses around their strengths and they compensate for their weaknesses. Also, don’t panic if you discover that you have weaknesses. Every entrepreneur has them.

“Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others.” -Jocelyn Murray, The English Pirate

5. Proper optimisation of resources

At the first instance, you should hire people more effectively and consciously. Once you hire them, then the next target should be on a better use and optimisation of those resources you have. In order to increase labour utilization rates and make the services team more profitable, many companies put all the responsibility on the sales team to sell more in order to keep the field technicians fully booked.

So, ideally in order to achieve more than 65% labour utilization, you need the ability to forecast expected hours by specialized resources. You also need to be able to forecast those hours 30, 60, and 90 days in advance.

“Optimal thinking leaders point the best way forward. They rise above mediocre and even extraordinary thinking and performance.”-Rosalene Glickman, Optimal Thinking Executive Coach

6. Focus on customer relationship management (CRM)

Customer relationship management is a very important aspect in any of the business or start-up. The relationship with your customers is all that takes to build anything further. There are many softwares available in the market. Here’s a list of some popular softwares which could be used for the same.

7. Keep your eyes open

Creative people are always on the quest for inspiration and new starting points. They know that opportunities can be found everywhere. The funny thing about life is, sometimes there are opportunities staring us in the face yet we’re so oblivious to their presence. It could be the potential for a new relationship, the excitement in a new job, or the possibility of moving to a new city. Yet, somehow, we manage to ‘miss’ these opportunities and decide to stay on a path that feels safe and comfortable. For running a safe and profitable business one must keep their eyes open always looking forward to better opportunities available.

“Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.” -Samuel Palmer

8. Be ready for failures

You will fail. It’s inevitable, so you might as well begin preparing for it now. Don’t scale your business unless you are ready. The most important factor is to realise that you are failing and once you know this, it doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Always look forward to better opportunities and try to learn from your failures and that’s what all it takes.

“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” -Colin Powell

As times have changed and the start-up culture is running at its peak. Today we have a lot more opportunities and chances to discover about business and entrepreneurship tactics.

There are institutions which provide such special courses where you can learn more about business and entrepreneurship which could help you on the journey further. Details from one such trusted institution are mentioned below.

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India

In 1983 began the journey of a distinctive Institute in India. It was in this year that Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India or EDII, as it is fondly called, started finding its standing in the domain of entrepreneurship. Identifying the scope of entrepreneurship and with the understanding that entrepreneurs are not necessarily born but can also be created through well-conceived training began an inspiring odyssey – the story of over three successful decades of EDII. Set up with the support of IDBI Bank Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd, IFCI Ltd, SBI and Government of Gujarat, EDII started enhancing its ambit of activities for various target groups. The Institute started receiving support from various governments, and several programmes and courses were introduced to bring out the hidden ‘entrepreneur’ in people across diverse sectors and segments. From the very beginning, the Institute was clear about changing lives, not only at the higher echelons of society but also at the bottom of the pyramid. EDII, with its courses and training, started emerging as the breeding ground of several innovative ideas.

Course Details

Post Graduate Diploma in Management – Business Entrepreneurship

Dream > Dare > Deliver

This is an accelerated, rigorous and application-oriented course offered with an aim to impart comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurial ecosystem; develop first generation entrepreneurs by building skills in initiating and growing an enterprise; enable family business successors to evolve as change agents who encourage competitiveness and growth of business; nurture intrapreneurial aspirations and enhance capabilities.

Post Graduate Diploma in Management – Development Studies

Discover > Change > Sustain

PGDM-DS is designed as a broad and multi-disciplinary programme to equip students with the knowledge, analytical and conceptual skills of social and economic development. The course provides entrepreneurial solutions to social problems, livelihoods for rural and urban underprivileged, helps undertake corporate social responsibility initiatives and create social enterprises. PGDM-DS enhances leadership skills and competencies to develop and implement strategies that enable social organizations /enterprises to be strongly positioned in the future.

Unique aspects of the programme

• Blends management learning with the development orientation
• Focuses on enterprising solutions for development challenges by orienting students towards social entrepreneurship
• Focuses on imparting both educational & research skills to the next generation of development professionals
• Provides entrepreneurial solutions to social problems and livelihoods for rural and urban poor
• Helps undertake Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Initiatives
• Helps build successful Impact Ventures